Room to roam
Photos: Rudi van Aarde. Article from the Wild Magazine Winter 2016
The ‘elephant problem’ in some protected areas is controversial, but numbers are no longer the focus of elephant management.
Around campfires, and in the media, the closure of water points, birth control, and the destruction of vegetation by elephants have long been hotly debated. Some argue there are too many of them. Yet the conservation aim is neither to cull or feed these icons nor to nurture their babies. Modern-day conservation focuses on the wellbeing of the land, instead of on populations. Is it possible to maintain ecological processes while providing space for elephants?
To find out more about this holistic approach to elephant management, Wild questioned internationally acknowledged elephant expert Rudi van Aarde, director of the Conservation Ecology Research Unit at the University of Pretoria.
Q. In essence, what is the ‘elephant problem’?
A. Human perceptions. The real problem we face is not elephants, but whether the space assigned to them and other wildlife provides for their needs and will ensure their persistence.
Q. Is a park as large as Kruger, an ecosystem of 2 million hectares, too small for the number of elephants?
A. The fractions of land set aside for conservation are relatively small, but across sub-Saharan Africa cover a remarkable 17 percent of the land. In an ideal world, these need to be linked into ecological networks that allow animals and plants to move in response to ecological limitations rather than socio-economic and political limitations. Several landowners and countries in Southern Africa have done so and elephants and other species now roam onto neighbouring land, suggesting national parks alone do not meet their needs. Wildlife numbers within many isolated parks have been tumbling over the past 40 years, principally due to the lack of space across which to move in response to large-scale environmental changes. Conservation without borders may well become the focus of most of our future. The removal of fences between Kruger and Mozambique’s Limpopo National Park to establish the Greater Limpopo Transfrontier Park has been a step in the right direction as it allows for seasonal movements of animals and the consequent recovery periods for vegetation.
Q. Why has the emphasis changed?
A. We have learned from past mistakes. Poaching for ivory and habitat loss at the turn of the previous century changed things for elephants, as did the establishment of protected areas and the consequent well-intended bundling of elephants into these areas. This was the right thing to do at the time, but for elephants, there was a price to pay. They lost land and populations became fragmented. Elephants could no longer disperse and this boosted numbers within some protected areas, especially those where managers at the time considered water supplementation as a measure through which to conserve species. Crowding near water destroyed vegetation. In some places this justified culling operations.
Some 30 to 40 years later, the ineffectiveness of culling to reduce impact became apparent. Now the emphasis has shifted to the management of impact rather than elephant numbers. Such management in part is achieved through the closing of water holes to restore movement patterns. Conservation is not farming. Wildlife numbers respond well to farming practices, but only in the short term. Short-term responses such as positive population growth is not what conservation is about. It is about medium and long-term zero growth and sustainable land use patterns.
Q. If elephants could move about freely, where would they choose to live?
A. They like relatively flat terrain, near water, with moderate tree cover, preferably far from people. Based on the information we have gathered from elephants through satellite tracking and from information on the land they prefer and avoid, we can now design ecological networks that have a high likelihood of catering to the medium and long-term needs of elephants. In theory, opportunities exist for three colossal ecological networks that cover the range of most of Southern Africa’s elephants. This is one of our future responsibilities to elephants.
Q. We also have a responsibility to thousands of other species, both fauna and flora. What about the trees that are being uprooted?
A. There is no doubt about it, elephants trample, debark, uproot and break trees. However, they also disperse the seeds of trees, create shelters for several species, promote nutrient cycling, enhance food availability for other species, and open up woodlands. In spite of hundreds of studies and nearly 400 scientific papers produced over the past 50 years on the impact of elephants on other species, we still have no evidence of elephants inducing a loss of species. Yes, elephants can and do change vegetation structure, but not biological diversity. They are part and parcel of biological diversity.
Q. Will it help to reduce water points?
A. Yes. Elephants need water, not only for drinking but also, very importantly, to maintain body temperature. Elephants have no sweat glands and apart from behaviour such as bathing and shade seeking, evaporate water through the skin to cool off. It follows that such needs determine where elephants will be and will feed off the land. They breed slowly but are well adapted to cope with droughts, except for young elephants. Drought and stress-related die-offs of juvenile elephants keep overall population growth in check.
Water supplementation does the opposite, it alters land use and concentrates feeding onto land where plants cannot cope with grazing and browsing pressures. It furthermore boosts population growth to levels that irritate landowners!
Q. Should there be elephants in small protected areas?
A. No. Elephants in small protected areas have no space to scatter when the summer rains arrive. The year-round use of the same land and food sources provides little opportunity for vegetation to recover from elephant browsing. If distances between watering points are too short to provide sensitive vegetation with the opportunity and the space to escape from the harmful effects of elephant foraging, we should explore alternative management options. This may include the removal of elephants. At best, the practice of founding elephant populations on relatively small areas should be discontinued as elephants forced to live in such areas generate more problems than their conservation worth.
Q. Is birth control an option?
A. No. Animals on birth control do not stop eating! Birth control does not control impact, it merely reduces birth rates in the short term. Low breeding rates do not lower impact. On the other hand, techniques to inhibit breeding is a promising tool for the management of elephants in small areas, especially those that have become ‘mega zoos’. More often than not these places are there to entertain people who are willing and able to pay for such entertainment. To me, this is a legitimate land-use option, but for ecological reasons, birth control is not realistic for large populations and hence not relevant for conservation.
What about Kruger?
In Kruger National Park there are about 16,900 elephants. Without natural methods of control, Kruger’s elephant population, according to some, would be over 25,000. The current cent growth rate, lower than two percent, is a major response compared with the past growth rate of 6,5 percent when culling was the method of managing elephant numbers.
Over two-thirds of boreholes were closed after 2003, starting in the drier, northern areas. As expected, with less easily available water, more calves and elderly elephants died. As elephants moved away, the landscape and vegetation got a respite from elephant use and biodiversity benefited. The near doubling of elephant numbers over a period of 20 years since culling stopped is typical of elephants and also occurred elsewhere in Africa. Kruger’s elephant population is trending towards stability, as is also the case for elephant numbers in northern Botswana, northwestern Zimbabwe, and 15 other populations for which we have good count data collected over extended periods.
Work in Kruger suggests one to four percent of all trees in the park are destroyed each year by elephants. While this level of damage may be supportable, it can transform the structure of the park’s vegetation, which now, more than ever before, has to respond to climatic events and changes. Plants are extremely sensitive to ‘bottom-up’ limitations such as water and soil fertility, but highly resilient to ‘top-down’ limitations such as herbivory and fire.
It must be noted that Kruger, as other places in sub-Saharan Africa, is presently encroached by trees and other species that are benefiting from increased carbon dioxide and temperature to the detriment of grasses. Grazers within parks are suffering the consequences.
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